Struggles with Linux, as you do.

[repairedCheese]

I've been trying to get any form of Linux working on my G5, and just when I think I've cracked that nut, something goes completely wrong. Usually it seems that after a certain point, usually after doing updates, it refuses to boot to anything I can interact with, which I have to imagine is some kind of driver issue, but my understanding was that AMD had the better driver support, so my Radeon 9600 shouldn't be causing this much trouble, should it? At least, that's been my history with Debian based distros on the thing.

The irony is, it seems that getting Lubuntu running on an eMac is supposed to be a challenge, and, not knowing that, I installed Lubuntu 16.04 from an official iso, did updates, and everything worked. Oh, it's painfully slow on a 700mhz system, to the point of graphical elements lagging when you drag windows around the screen, and that includes the dragged windows, but everything works. Just, slowly. I'm just annoyed that my firewire drive died, and I ended up needing to use the partition for other things, but it seems like, as long as I'm using a cd sized image, it should work just fine. Can't really say why my eMac doesn't like my burned dvds, but that's a whole different issue.

 

[smirking]

I just installed CentOS7 with GNOME Desktop environment onto an ASUS eeePC netbook that has a low power Atom CPU. It works, but it stutters a lot. I swapped in an SSD for the HDD on that machine and was hoping that it might be serviceable with an SSD. It only has 1GB of RAM so I may try giving it 2GB to see if it improves before I give up on turning it into a productive machine.

 

[repairedCheese]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that eeePC runs circles around my eMac, and I've been trying to figure out a way to turn the thing into something a little more productive. Not that running OS 9 isn't fun and all, but it's a shame that my music library can't easily be played through the thing. I was able to get VLC 2 running in Leopard and found out that .vlc playlists are just .m3u playlists, but you have to rename them for them to work. And, because it needs to get to know the files, it has to read each one first.

So, VLC on Leopard is maybe not the most ideal way to play music on a 700mhz G4. But since I set the music library up on Windows, and it includes flac, ogg, and wma files, I'm not exactly interested in the usual "convert this file to something itunes can play" advice. I was hoping to find something in Linux that would be a little more lightweight.

 

[wicknix]

Have you tried an older distro on your emac? I whipped up a nice ubuntu 12 remix that's super light and cruises along on my mac mini. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/lubuntu-16-04-remix.2204742/ bottom of first post is the link.
Also debian's 5.x kernels don't boot (they kernl panic) on G5's currently. I have no issue with the radeon 9600, but you have to stay with the stock 4.x kernel for now until they fix the issue. I have a fix linked here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/debian-sid-remix-ppc32-ppc64.2221125/

Cheers

 

[repairedCheese]

I was actually playing with Debian Sid, and ran into that exact issue. Booting with boot : old didn't solve the problem, either. Sounds like I should give Sid another go, especially since it was working really well on the older kernel. As in, my dual 2ghz cpu G5 was actually looking like it might be able to generally handle 480p youtube with no skipping.

I'll definitely have to try out the older distro for the eMac though, I can probably squeeze enough space for another os on its old 40gb hdd. That thing spends so much time reliving the 90's that I tend to forget it can even do anything modern.

 

[wicknix]

Yeah give sid another shot. This time hold the stock kernel and you'll be golden. The problem with multiple updates and apt autoremove is eventually the old kernel gets deleted. But holding it locks it in, and no further kernel updates will be installed.

 

[smirking]

I'll definitely have to try out the older distro for the eMac though, I can probably squeeze enough space for another os on its old 40gb hdd. That thing spends so much time reliving the 90's that I tend to forget it can even do anything modern.

Why don’t you replace that HDD with a low end SSD?

 

[repairedCheese]

The thing about

Why don’t you replace that HDD with a low end SSD?

The thing about an eMac is that it's an absolute pain to get into. Sure, there's a guide, but then you're playing "don't touch the CRT" and then there's the whole matter of "time to adapt a SATA SSD to IDE" which, I mean, can absolutely be done. But, at the moment, the old 40gb inside the thing still passes SMART testing, and I'm really more worried about having a functioning drive than speed with that system.

 

[smirking]

The thing about an eMac is that it's an absolute pain to get into.

Oh yuck. I just looked at the disassembly guide. That’s like trying to take apart a modern zoom lens! Yeah, probably not worth the hassle.

 

[repairedCheese]

Oh yuck. I just looked at the disassembly guide. That’s like trying to take apart a modern zoom lens! Yeah, probably not worth the hassle.

The eMac may be my favorite of the late all-in-ones, but that doesn't make it an easy machine to work with. Heck, I'm lucky it came with a single stick of 512mb ram, nowhere have I seen that as a stock amount, and it seems to be extremely finicky about the ram it takes, even if getting ram in is rather easy in comparison.

 

[splifingate]

I just installed CentOS7 with GNOME Desktop environment onto an ASUS eeePC netbook that has a low power Atom CPU. It works, but it stutters a lot. I swapped in an SSD for the HDD on that machine and was hoping that it might be serviceable with an SSD. It only has 1GB of RAM so I may try giving it 2GB to see if it improves before I give up on turning it into a productive machine.

I've a 1005PE upgraded to 2GB and an SSD, and it now runs (my preference) Openbox on my Funtoo install very well . . . Firefox is abysmally slow, but, well, the eeePC is really slim silicon

Since Funtoo (like Gentoo) compiles everything from source, multiple days passed before I was really able to get to an X-session . . . my 12-core T5500 was, well, 'responsive' to the idea, and the perspective-shift almost made me cry....

Go for 2GB, unless you really want to drive 16-penny nails into your eyes

Regards, splifingate

 

[smirking]

I've a 1005PE upgraded to 2GB and an SSD, and it now runs (my preference) Openbox on my Funtoo install very well . . . Firefox is abysmally slow, but, well, the eeePC is really slim silicon

Go for 2GB, unless you really want to drive 16-penny nails into your eyes

Ok, 2GB it is then! Good to know and I'm glad you told me that you found Firefox to be abysmally slow too. For the most part, the pokey performance was bearable until I got to Firefox and it was terrible. I didn't think there was any point to working on this any more if everything was going to run like Firefox.

What do you use your 1005PE for? I'm not too sure exactly what I plan to do with mine. I haven't done anything with it in years. I've always found it to be a fun little gagdet and wanted to bring it back to life.

 

[splifingate]

The 1005 has been sitting idle for a few years, and it's just an educational side project for portable tinkering . . .

Regards, splifingate

 

[repairedCheese]

Update: Debian Sid turned out to be, well, unstable. I suppose I shouldn't exactly be surprised. It certainly works, but it doesn't really feel like it's daily driver quality. Talking to a friend who exclusively uses Linux, they're actually not that surprised with the state of Debian powerpc development. I'm hardly done trying out distros on my G5, that's for sure. Apparently there's still active development for openSUSE? For ppc64, anyway.

As for the eMac, Lubuntu 12.04 seemed to work quite well, but it both managed to install with a broken yaboot, and broke the OS 9 install while it was at it. I'm pretty sure I can fix 9, and I've done enough installs to know I can probably even get a working install of Lubuntu on the machine if I try again. Seeing Arctic-Fox run as well as it did on a 700mhz 512mb G4 from a livedisk really impressed me, and it's definitely worth working on.

I realize it would be a lot easier if I just devoted these machines, or at least a whole hard drive, to linux, but my goal here is always going to be to multiboot, and that's always going to be more challenging. But when it works, I feel the results are worth it.

 

[z970]

It certainly works, but it doesn't really feel like it's daily driver quality.

The user's choice of desktop environment can have a big impact on look and feel. Which one did you pick?

Under the hood (CLI), PowerPC Sid is pretty similar (if not almost identical) to what's available for x86. But of course, that only matters depending on your comfortability with Linux and UNIX in general.

 

[repairedCheese]

The user's choice of desktop environment can have a big impact on look and feel. Which one did you pick?

Under the hood (CLI), PowerPC Sid is pretty similar (if not almost identical) to what's available for x86. But of course, that only matters depending on your comfortability with Linux and UNIX in general.

LXDE is my general goto for these older systems. I realize the G5 can probably handle more, but I have silly goals like running qemu for kicks, and more reasonable ones like using recent versions of vlc. That 2nd one is where Debian seems to run into a bit of a roadblock, as it crashes on a playlist that works in vlc 2 on 10.5. I have a feeling Lubuntu will probably be where the hardware ends up, but I keep eyeing these ppc64 distros.

And of course, this all becomes slightly more trouble once Lubuntu ends its support life span. It's not that I'm worried about security, but I am worried about new software getting built for it, updates tend to be nice.

 

[wicknix]

Choice of distro and hardware can be tricky. For instance, after playing around with various machines/distros here's my findings on my hardware:
Debian Sid (also including mintppc/fienix) on my G5's (single 1.6 and dual 2.0) is usable, but sluggish no matter what DE/WM is used and the 5.x kernels panic on both. However on my G4 mini's (single 1.5) it flies, like, runs circles around my G5's on Sid. I don't get it, but it is what it is. Same on powerbook G4, Sid is quite fast and responsive.
Lubuntu 16 on both G5's is fast. Boot-up is slower than Debian, but the UI is snappy. I click an app and it opens instantly, on Debian there is a decent lag (on the G5's). Lubuntu 16 is sluggish by default with LXDE on the G4 mini's with the radeon 9200 gfx card. Switching to IceWm or openbox fixes the issue and it zips along nicely. No issues on the powerbook G4 with L16 (except suspend/resume doesn't work).
Lubuntu 12 / Debian Jessie, no issues on any machine. Fast (lacks systemd), and suspend/resume works.
Void-ppc (xfce iso). Installer kernel panics on both G5's and both G4 mini's. It does however work fine on the powerbook G4. Boots fast. UI doesn't have any lag, and feels comparable in responsiveness to Lubuntu 12 on the PB.
So here is my current setup after my findings:
2.0 G5 runs Lubuntu 16.04.6 Remix (top drive) and also 10.5.8 Leopard (bottom drive)
1.6 G5 dual boots Lubuntu 16.04.6 Remix and Debian Sid (sid stayed just because i spent time hacking in a ubuntu kernel that worked, otherwise its oddly slow)
1.5 G4 mini runs Debian Sid w/5.4 kernel very well. Amazingly well actually.
1.5 G4 mini runs Lubuntu 12.04 Remix (for building arctic fox with greater compat with older distros) and because it's fast.
1.67 G4 powerbook dual boots Lubuntu 12.04 Remix (because everything works, like backlit keyboard, media keys, suspend, resume etc) and void-ppc for testing.

Cheers

 

[z970]

LXDE is my general goto for these older systems. I realize the G5 can probably handle more, but I have silly goals like running qemu for kicks, and more reasonable ones like using recent versions of vlc. That 2nd one is where Debian seems to run into a bit of a roadblock, as it crashes on a playlist that works in vlc 2 on 10.5. I have a feeling Lubuntu will probably be where the hardware ends up, but I keep eyeing these ppc64 distros.

And of course, this all becomes slightly more trouble once Lubuntu ends its support life span. It's not that I'm worried about security, but I am worried about new software getting built for it, updates tend to be nice.

I would recommend something like MATE or Xfce for an experience a little more akin to "daily driver", while still keeping hardware resources in mind.

Try around. See if you land on one you like.

 

[timidpimpin]

The old adage of Linux will always be faster is long dead. A lighter Linux will be, but many assume that ANY Linux will be faster, and this assumption needs to die.

 

[z970]

The old adage of Linux will always be faster is long dead. A lighter Linux will be, but many assume that ANY Linux will be faster, and this assumption needs to die.

"Faster" is relative. When comparing modern Linux to modern macOS or Windows 10 on a spinner disk, I can say from personal experience that most Linux distributions are usually faster during general operation.

However, we may start encountering problems to this argument when we're comparing almost 15 year old inherently lighterweight operating systems like Tiger and Leopard to modern Linux distributions, which are held to a completely different performance standard AND built primarily with modern machines in mind (and given that, it's a wonder that Linux on PowerPC performs as well as it does).

In which case, yeah, Linux (or more accurately, the user's choice of desktop environment) might not be faster. But the sheer capability, support, and security compared to 10.4 / 10.5 are what's mainly fueling the drive here.

 

[wicknix]

And of course, this all becomes slightly more trouble once Lubuntu ends its support life span. It's not that I'm worried about security, but I am worried about new software getting built for it, updates tend to be nice.

I think i found a solution to that problem. Today i decided to experiment. On a spare drive i installed debian sid first (and updated, installed packages etc), then i installed ubuntu12remix (i let the installer for ubuntu12 "install alongside debian sid"). By default it boots ubuntu12, to boot debian sid type "Debian-Linux" at boot: prompt. Here's the fun part. I used debian sid as my chroot environment so i can run updated software on the older ubuntu12. In time i plan on making a script to auto launch the chroot on boot, and auto-umount the chroot upon shutdown/reboot. You can do this with any distro. I just chose ubuntu12remix for this experiment because its very light, it flies on the dual G5, and it lacks systemd.

NOTE: You can also install a chrooted Sid inside your currently running OS, but this doesn't cover that. Google it.
Example: https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/apds03.html.en

You will probably need to change the mount point of the debian root partition, but here is how i start the chroot:
Create directory /mnt/debian
Run all these commands as root user

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/debian
mount -t proc none /mnt/debian/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/debian/dev
mount -o bind /run /mnt/debian/run
chroot /mnt/debian /bin/bash
export PS1="(debian-chroot) $PS1"
su matt (use your username)
export PS1="(debian-chroot) $PS1"
cd ~

Now launch your "new" software from the chrooted terminal. You can also control your entire Sid install from within the chroot. Like apt install / update / upgrade, fix broken kernels, grub, yaboot etc.

Then to cleanly exit and unmount the chroot:

exit (exits user account)
exit (exits chroot)
umount /mnt/debian/dev
umount /mnt/debian/proc
umount /mnt/debian/run
umount /mnt/debian

Neofetch from the chrooted debian sid and ubuntu 12 remix.

LibreOffice 6 running via chroot on ubuntu 12 remix.

VLC 3.0.8 running via chroot on ubuntu 12 remix

Cheers

 

[mortlocli]

I just installed CentOS7 with GNOME Desktop environment onto an ASUS eeePC netbook that has a low power Atom CPU. It works, but it stutters a lot. I swapped in an SSD for the HDD on that machine and was hoping that it might be serviceable with an SSD. It only has 1GB of RAM so I may try giving it 2GB to see if it improves before I give up on turning it into a productive machine.

Have you had a look at Slitaz as a low spec linux os?

slitaz.org

Ive tried several linux os ona really old tower PC of mine and that one worked the best.

I have it running on a emachine netbook.
They have a weekly rolling version to download:

Index of /iso/rolling/

 

[smirking]

Have you had a look at Slitaz as a low spec linux os?

I haven't tried that before. I'd love to experiment with some lean Linux setups, but I'm a little put off by that Slitaz hasn't been updated in almost 8 years.

 

[repairedCheese]

Here's the fun part. I used debian sid as my chroot environment so i can run updated software on the older ubuntu12.

You know, I was honestly talking about the alternative distros that seem far more active, but I have to say that this really is an excellent solution to quite a few issues that both Debian Sid and Ubuntu 12 have. And as much as I might look forward to ppc64 coming in and helping get a couple more years of new software development for my G5, it's not like that's going to help my G4 much. Even x86 has been shedding 32-bit support on the Linux front, ppc is destined to have a much worse time.

So here's hoping it can be even more streamlined, maybe down to the point where we're just able to load Debian Sid repositories on older Ubuntu and Lubuntu builds without needing to install both.

 

[wicknix]

Yeah, it's more of a stop gap solution, but completely usable. Ubuntu 16 after April 2021 will be EOL, debian and anything based on it has unofficial support and may never be 100% complete. Best bets for the future will probably be void and Adelie. The problem for me is voids installer won't boot on 4 out of 5 of my ppc machines. I'm fine with running whatever works best on each machine, even if they are older. Still newer than osx, and have the ability to compile anything I want to update.

Cheers